


Touch the Floor

by nononokey



Series: Too Much to Ask [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: F/M, Seifer doesn't know what he wants, as per usual, boooooo, don't Chocobo surf at home kids, he goes back and forth and is kind of a jerk about it, in the words of Selphie, innocent fun turns into relationship drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 18:15:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13393488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nononokey/pseuds/nononokey
Summary: Quistis hadn't expected their fun day out to turn into an all-night-long relationship tug-and-pull with an injured guy.To be fair, Seifer had other plans, too.(can be read without having read the first part)





	Touch the Floor

**Author's Note:**

> As this is obviously a "sequel" to Take a Picture, It'll Last Longer, the same details apply: post-game, Seifer is back at Garden and a SeeD at last.
> 
> Disclaimer: Since Square Enix is making my dreams slowly come true by announcing Dissidia Opera Omnia for global release at last, next up is VIII remake and then gifting the entire VIII universe to me! But in the meantime, they own it and all the characters and settings and stuff. I just play make-believe with them.

Quistis took a look at the scene in front of her and thought, not for the first time, that her latest mission had been less official and much less fuss. Seifer and Zell were inspecting the choice of Chocobos closely, keeping as much an eye on the birds as each other as they searched for the best one. What had started out as a fun day out for the four of them present was quickly turning into an all-out war for victory. She could almost smell the blood in the air.

Beside her, Selphie was eyeing the boys with similar thoughts. “Which one do you think will happen first: they kill each other, or they kill themselves?”

Quistis gave her a strangled look and checked her own magic stock. She was adequately stocked, but she would have liked to be more prepared. Alas, her mission had taken some hours longer than anticipated, and she’d hurried straight from debrief to meet up with her friends – and her something-not-yet-defined Seifer. “How are you on curatives, Selphie?”

“Hmm.” A speculative, in-turned look came over the shorter girl as she mentally racked up her stock. “Ehh, I think we’ll be fine. I’ve got Auras so we can try for Slots and Full-Cure if worse comes to worst!”

Quistis didn’t feel very reassured. She turned to look at the boys again; they were growling to each other over the same Chocobo now. “I wish Irvine were here, he’d mellow the mood out.”

“Yeah”, Selphie echoed, unusually sombre. “But he’s on that stupid intra-Garden meeting mission with Squally, and Rinny used the time off to go see her dad. I told her we’d go racing again but she said she needs to go. BAH!”

Quistis just sighed. She knew Selphie was all for family relations kept intact, even if one’s father was General Caraway. Selphie was also all for fun with their accidentally (or was it fate?) formed family, and the two desires tore at her. Thankfully, the brunette wasn’t one to dwell on sad things, and Quistis saw a spark light in her green eyes even as she watched.

“Ooh, Quisty! We should make this one a joust! A tournament!”

JUST what they needed to quell the bloodlust radiating off of the two blond young men. “Selphie--”

“Nooo, just hear me out!” Selphie waved her hands in front of Quistis’s face disarmingly. “The boys’ll be fighting it out no matter what, so let’s make it FUN!”

Quistis blinked, and Selphie evidently took it as encouragement.

“The boys will be our knights, and we’ll be their swooning ladies! We’ll reward them with our favours, and perhaps a kiss on the cheek if they win for us!”

“Are you sure Irvine won’t--” Quistis tried to wiggle out of her friend’s latest ‘great plan’.

“Dibs on Quistis”, rumbled a masculine voice, and both girls turned to look at Seifer leering down at them. He bowed slightly to Selphie. “Not that you aren’t a dearie, Selphie, but I’m sure Kinneas would rather trust you with Dincht in his absence.”

Selphie looked equal parts delightedly excited and concerned as she replied, “You make the most innocent fun sound so ominous, Seifie!”

He backed off immediately, holding his hands up in front of him in a placating gesture. “So sorry for that! But Quistis gets me better, don’t you, Quis? We’re two birds of a feather.”

“I find that insulting”, Quistis deadpanned back. Deep down, she knew he was right, at least partially; there was a darkness in them that Selphie would, thank Hyne, never know.

“Then allow me to make amends, my dear lady”, he said, attempting to draw her to him.

Quistis resisted. They were in public, with their still thankfully oblivious friends…! “I think you’d do better with THIS bird of your feather, Seifer.” She nodded towards the large, pink Chocobo that had trailed after him and was now nudging his head fondly with her own.

“What can I say, I’m a hit with all the ladies...” When Selphie turned her focus towards Zell, who was still picking out his steed in the near distance, Seifer mouthed a silent “Jealous?” at Quistis and grinned. She rolled her eyes in response, being fairly sure that the Chocobo, no matter how lovely and Seifer-loving it seemed to be, couldn’t do for him what she did.

“I see you’re wearing eyeliner again!” Selphie interjected suddenly. Her voice was loud enough to make both the Chocobo and its would-be rider flinch slightly, although in Seifer’s case that could also be because of her reference to his ID photo and the eyeliner he’d neglected to remove before the photograph was taken.

“It’s not...” He swore under his breath, making Selphie giggle and Quistis flick her tongue out at him. “It’s not eyeliner, Tilmitt! It’s war paint!” A faint pink colour was rising on his cheeks, accentuated by the thick black lines he had on them. “And even if it was, I’d still look good!”

“Did Zell make the same joke about your make-up?” Quistis guessed. “For eyeliner, it’s a little off its mark. You should practise applying it a little more.” Seifer’s sudden glare at her was all the answer she needed. “Aww, my big knight, you know you look good. Don’t let the children’s mocking get to you.”

“Ooooohhhh, I just had a thought!” They both turned to look at Selphie, who ignored their dubious expressions and rattled on. “Since my Irvy’s away, and Seifie’s mystery lady--” Here she gave him a sour look, nettled by the fact that he STILL hadn’t given up his paramour’s identity despite her efforts and pleas. “--isn’t here either, WE should team up against Quisty and Zelly!”

“Do you ever actually acknowledge people by their given names?” Seifer asked. “Even during missions and official meetings? Or is it ‘Commander Squally’ there as well?”

“Stop changing the subject, Seifie! I know what you’re trying, and it won’t work!” She was a whole foot shorter than him and tiny in comparison to his bulk, but when she put her fists on her hips and gave him a patented Selphie Tilmitt Mean Look, he leaned towards Quistis for support.

Luckily, Zell had finally picked a steed for himself and was leading it towards them, and Quistis used the opportunity to call out, “Zell, you’re with Selphie against Seifer and me!”

“All riiight!” Once he’d reached them, the energetic duo high-fived loud enough to make the Chocobos look alarmed. Selphie was happy enough to be teamed with someone so similar to her that she didn’t even remember to pout at Quistis for overriding her. Not that it would have mattered; they all still instinctively bowed to the ex-Instructor’s orders, recognising her skill and expertise. Even Squall relied on her more than he acknowledged, armed as he was with experienced support staff. Xu and Nida and Headmaster Cid were immeasurably valuable with their help, but Squall still always wanted to hear his closest friends’ thoughts and views as well.

Zell shot a long, pointedly demoralising look at Seifer and his pink Chocobo. “What a manly colour, there!”

“Yeah, ‘cause pale yellow just screams masculinity”, Seifer spat back, screwing up his face at Zell’s ride.

“MISSION BRIEFING TIME!” Selphie literally hopped between the two, her fists on her hips again, and glared at both of them. “Quisty and Seifie, go over to that side of the start line, we’ll go to this side!”

“Whose idea was this again?” Quistis huffed as she and Seifer padded over to their designated ‘briefing area’, followed by the enamoured pink bird, who kept making soft “Wark!” noises at Seifer and eyeing Quistis with the mistrust only a jealous lover can muster. The first race they’d all had had been fun; even she had taken a turn riding the deceptively fast Chocobo down the beach, the wind whipping her hair and making her cheeks flush with colour… and when she’d seen the hungry look on Seifer’s face upon seeing her, she’d blushed harder. There had been no clear winner, just fun little bets on which one of the competitors would clear that particular stretch of sand first. But now, with just Quistis alone trying to control Zell and Selphie’s exuberance and Seifer’s competitive streak buttons being hit by both of them in different ways, they were in for a real race.

Seifer stopped and turned to her with a lewd smile on his face. His eyes, though, were soft and full of fondness that made Quistis shiver. “Sooo, my beautiful lady, what do I get for being your knight in shining SeeD leisure uniform? You’ll note that it’s a clean one as well...”

“Yes, I see you took my suggestion about the laundry lists to heart”, she purred back. The Chocobo squinted at her smiling face, much too close to Seifer’s for her liking, and butted between them with a stern “WARK!”. Quistis just laughed, and Seifer smiled in response.

“Promise I’ll do better this time around”, he said, his voice husky and low.

“Better? Better than the last race? But you-- Oh.” Quistis suddenly understood he wasn’t referring to the last Chocobo race, but to his previous stint as a knight. “Well, I’m no evil sorceress so of course you will”, she said gently. She wanted to cup his face, and she almost did, but pulled her hand back at the last minute, mindful of both Selphie and Zell being near and the territorial Chocobo giving her a very dirty look. She saw Seifer notice her gesture, and that had to be enough for now.

“But you’ve bewitched me anyway”, he retorted.

Not knowing how to respond to that, Quistis reached up and, carefully avoiding the pecks of Seifer’s feathered new lover, teased his hair up into a style that matched Zell’s, although Seifer’s shorter hair made him resemble a fierce little Chicobo more than anything else. “There, now you’re styled for the tournament!” she said as she stepped back to admire the result. She knew it was a good look when the pink Chocobo warked happily and nudged her cheek with her huge beak. “Two birds of a feather. That’s my favour to you.”

They glanced over at the other team to see what Selphie’s favour to Zell would be, but all they saw were the backs of the three of them, two humans and one Chocobo, all hunched up into a pre-battle huddle. Quistis blinked. Apparently this really was serious business; Seifer had to be beaten.

The scarred knight didn’t seem concerned at all as he grabbed Quistis’s jaw, taking advantage of the fact that the others were preoccupied, and turned her face to his. So close, and so damn far, as far as kissing went… “So, what do I get if I win this for you?” The flame in his eyes made her knees go weak.

“A special treat. Tonight”, she managed to whisper back. “All yours, and yours alone.”

Seifer’s grin widened. “If we get away from my new admirer”, he quipped, tipping his head towards his Chocobo. Then he raised his voice loud enough to be heard by the other team: “How about a good luck kiss?”

Behind her, Quistis could her the appropriately disgusted ‘eww’s of her friends, almost lost beneath the Chocobo’s warking – though it was anybody’s guess now whether she was protesting or cajoling. Quistis’s chuckles were cut short as Seifer dropped his voice again, to address her and her alone.

“I know we agreed, once upon a time, to save good luck wishes for bad students who need them, but I don’t mind good luck kisses. And speaking of those… You don’t have to keep marking me with hickeys, Quis, I’m yours anyway.” He took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles, looking deep into her eyes, and suddenly burst into a wild series of movements before she could respond at all, swinging himself up to the Chocobo’s back. “Ready to lose, Chicken-Wuss?!”

“Team Booyaka is ready to win!” came the excited reply, as Zell hopped on his steed and both birds edged towards the starting line.

Selphie was admiring Seifer’s new hairdo as she and Quistis found their way to each other by the fence. “Wow, you really look like brothers now!”

To Zell, this was the definition of friendly fire, sabotage from his own team. “EWW!” he yelled, trying frantically to smother his own puff of hair into a slicked-back style – not realising the irony of going for Seifer’s normal hair style. Meanwhile, Seifer simply laughed, a mean tone in his mirth.

As the Chocobos measured each other with menace in their beady eyes, their riders practically doing the same, Quistis felt a warmth wash over her and reached out to it, glad of it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Selphie lower her hands from casting the Aura, and nodded in gratefulness to the younger woman’s wisdom and foresight. The sound of the birds digging their claws into the earth was momentarily blocked by the ringing noise of Quistis’s Mighty Guard placing protective spheres on both of the riders.

And then they were off! Blurs of yellow and pink shot off like tiny rockets, loose earth flying in the air behind them, Selphie’s loud “WOOOOOO!!!” filling the air… Quistis wrung her hands, wanting to let her excitement win over, but worry digging its nails into the ground in protest. But it was a Chocobo race, they’d done this before, lots of people did this every day, even small children took part with Chicobos, what could go wrong?

“They’re surfing the birds!!!”

Trust Selphie to answer Quistis’s silent worries. “They’re going to kill themselves!” she gasped.

“Nooo, Zell has years of T-boarding expe… Oh, Quisty!” Selphie clamped both of her hands on her mouth, her green eyes wide with fear now.

Years of training, literally preparing to battle on even if their closest friends and comrades fell right in front of their eyes in cruel and terrifying ways, allowed Quistis to remain calm on the surface, despite her heart hammering in a panic-frozen chest. “Cast your Aura and start shuffling through the Slots!” she barked, and not a moment too soon, as they saw Zell fly off his bird in a great arch, while Seifer was hanging on from the neck of his and then falling to the ground, where…

“SELPHIE, NOW!”

They started running towards the fallen boys, adrenaline adding a spurt of speed to their already fast pace. Selphie even had breath enough to chatter on the way. “On it! Ugh, I’d have The End here… Why doesn’t it ever come up when I could actually use it… Ooh, Full-Cure is here! Oh, CRAP, boys...”

 

\ / I I I

 

Ugh.

Headache.

A skull-splintering headache. The white lights were killing him. Wait, white lights… Oh, no…

“Seifer. Seifer.” An angel was poking at him repeatedly in the arm. It hurt. “Seifer, wake up.”

“Turn off the fucking heaven first”, he mumbled back, trying to move his arm to cover his eyes. Why did dying have to be so bright? He’d always thought he’d end up in the other well-lit, much warmer place. And if this was heaven, why did his head hurt so damn much?

“The what…? Oh. Hang on.” There were soft steps, and then a wonderful dimming of the brightness. He groaned in relief as the steps padded back to him. “Now wake up. You’re not supposed to be asleep in your condition. Seifer.”

Testily, he cracked one eye open. Something shiny, and creamy, and honey-gold… with a blue orb, no, two… Slowly whatever it was in front of his face focused back into Quistis’s concerned expression.

“Wait, what… What happened?” How was she dead as well?!

“I don’t know which one of you idiots got it into their head first, but you both started Chocobo surfing. You KNOW only very skilled riders can do that with birds they have a strong compatibility with!”

His head rang with the force of her voice, and he groaned again.

“You’re lucky I placed protective spells on you before you took off! Hyne knows what shape you’d be in without them!”

“Stop shouting, Quis. Just tell me how we died… And why it matters what shape I’m in if I’m dead.” A thought occurred to him and he tried to grin, but it came out as a grimace and his head hurt more. “Or is this the fun kind of heaven where we can--”

“You’re not dead!” she said with less volume, still too loud for his liking. “You fell off your Chocobo and hung on to her neck, which she took as a strangulation attempt, and she promptly proceeded to stomp the living daylights out of you. Zell only flew off his and ended up with a broken arm, which Selphie was able to heal on the spot.”

“Then why am I in purgatory?” He couldn’t even force his voice out in anything stronger than a suffering rasp – or maybe it was his body’s way of making sure he didn’t add to the headache by being loud.

“You know from your training that brain trauma are better left off to be treated in an infirmary, not on the field. You have a concussion; it’s better to let it heal on its own than force curatives on it and potentially mess it up even more.”

Oh. Okay. Yeah, he vaguely remembered that. He sighed – ow. – and let his eyes fall shut again. Immediately the poking recommenced.

“Seifer, you HAVE to stay awake!”

He was a hit with the ladies, and the ladies hit him. Quistis had been up against him multiple times, both in frenemy-spirited practise battles when they were both cadets and in a more serious way during the Second Sorceress War along with Selphie and Rinoa; Ultimecia had painfully punished him whenever she was displeased with him, and boy, that had happened a lot, come to think of it now…; and now his charming new pink-feathered friend as well, not to mention Quistis once again, worrying at his arm currently. He was going to have several bruises tomorrow, and the least of them wouldn’t be from Quistis’s fingers. “Okay, OKAY! Fine! JUST STOP THAT!” In his agitation, his body produced quite a lot of noise after all, and he groaned. “Ughhh… And stop shouting...”

“I will if you stay awake”, she retorted, not minding the fact that he had been the one who shouted himself. Her beautiful features were furrowed into a concerned frown not unlike the one she used to have when she was his instructor. Well, Squall had got the brunt of the concerned frowns, while Seifer had usually been blessed with annoyed ones. He smiled at her now, feeling pleased to have bumped himself up on her ladder of affection by bumping uglies with her. Not that he would ever call any body part of either of them an uglie; she had a crotch to drool over and his manhood was fantastic…

Just as Quistis looked like she was about to say something that would lower his uplifted mood, Dr Kadowaki rushed into the room, snapping disposable gloves on. Seifer felt a cold nervous sweat instantly appear all over him. “There’s been a multiple-body accident at the Training Centre, I need every available space for the injured cadets, so Seifer will have to leave.” Phew. The gloves weren’t for him.

“Leave?” Quistis repeated. She started helping Seifer up off the bed and he almost shook her off with annoyance, until he got on his feet and found the floor uneven. Quistis’s iron grip on his bicep tightened, digging into all the bruises she’d poked there just minutes ago. The woman clearly had a thing for causing pain. Her other hand was snaking around his waist, though, and she moved the suffering arm around her shoulders, away from her sharp fingertips, so he forgave her. “He should be supervised for the next few hours… Especially since he has trouble staying awake on his own.”

She glared at him with the last words, and he wanted to roll his eyes at her, but trying that sent a fresh wave of nausea flooding over him, so he just closed his eyes. He waited for her to prod into his sensitive flesh again, but apparently being in an upright position, albeit heavily supported by her, made her believe he was awake.

“You can do it”, Dr Kadowaki suggested. “It doesn’t require any actual training, just make sure he stays awake and test his basic cognitive skills every now and then. It really isn’t any different from the sleep deprivation tests you both went through as SeeD cadets.” Seifer groaned again at that; he’d hated those tests. He’d had a migraine for two days after he’d finally passed them. “He seems fine for now, but if something comes up, of course you can come back here once we get the worst of the injuries treated and crisis support started.”

As Quistis walked him out of the Infirmary, a group of instructors and overly armed cadets met them at the door, carrying several badly injured students in. Seifer looked away instinctively, but just the overwhelming smell of blood mixed with dirt from the Training Centre, not to mention the pained gurgles the mauled little punks were making, were enough to make him puke. He didn’t mind any of those things normally, but his head was still ringing and the floor was still wobbly and all the lights were still too bright, and suddenly it was all just too much at once. With observation skills and speed that were a credit to her SeeD talents, Quistis whirled him around and bent him over the trash can in the corner, just in time.

“Don’t mind him, he hit his head pretty hard”, he heard her say to the people passing them. His gagging and retching echoed inside the trash can and the smell of bile made him feel even more sick. The physical motions of throwing up hurt like Ultimecia was using her magic to tear his body apart again and his skull was going to split… It was irony from Hyne himself that puking made him vomit more out of sheer pain. Apparently their unwitting witnesses had shuffled by, since Quistis put a hand on his back and pressed comfortingly. “Going to survive?”

He did survive, miraculously enough, and they made it all the way to his room before the next moment of agony hit. His key card was in his pants, but he needed his hands to lean against the wall for support, since the stupid floor was still insisting on not being smooth and level, so Quistis fished the key out for him. The sudden rush of blood from his head to his lower body made him feel sick again and he cringed. Why, why, why today of all days?!

As Seifer wobbled to his bed, sighing in relief as he lay his head on the cool, soft pillow, Quistis put his key card into her skirt pocket and began arranging stationery and magazines on his desk into neatly organised piles. He could tell she was busying herself with them in order not to put her hands on her hips and glare at him once again.

“Alright, I’ll stay here to monitor you and to make sure you don’t fall asleep”, she said, a perfectly arched eyebrow her only concession to her desire to get snarky with him.

“I can think of a few fun ways to keep me awake”, Seifer replied with a mirrored eyebrow lift of his own. His voice was low, partly due to the vomiting and his throbbing head, but since it wasn’t the only part of his body pulsing for attention anymore, he enjoyed the effect it had on Quistis.

She got flustered and almost knocked an old trophy of his off the desk. “No sex, mister. No strenuous activities while your head recovers.”

“Aww, come on! We could do it slow. You could be on top. Or I could lick you into heaven and then you could return the favour...”

“NO SEX.” Her voice had risen at least an octave in pitch, if not two, and she was giving his desk a not-the-fun-kind-of-dirty look, unable to look at him directly. “I mean it.”

“Aww… Not fair...” Seifer whined. He threw himself on his back and considered adding a flailing limb or two to the motion for effect, but decided against it; a child-like temper tantrum would definitely not help him get laid anytime soon.

Quistis turned her head enough to look at him, half to see that his eyes were still open and half to make sure he saw her displeased face. “I can call and see if Zell will switch places with me. He’d be extremely happy to spend time with you like this, keeping you awake and all...”

“I hate you”, Seifer said back without any real emotion in his voice. He kept his pleading eyes locked on hers anyway.

She didn’t flinch, she didn’t even care after all the other shit he’d told her over the years, some of it meant from the heart and most of it not. “I know.”

They managed about five minutes of silence, Seifer staring up at the ceiling and occasionally glancing at Quistis, who had sat down on his only chair and picked up some of his magazines to flip through. He waited long enough to catch her eyes flick up from the magazine, find his, and then drop back down, satisfied. When he sighed loudly for the fourth time, Quistis inhaled sharply and put the magazines away before scooting the chair closer.

“If you hadn’t…” she started, then bit back whatever the rest of that sentence was. Her voice was laced with anger and venom, which he hadn’t expected, and he furrowed his brow at her, ready to snap back. “We’re putting our lives on the line daily in our line of work”, she said instead. “There’s no reason to be a careless moron and act in such a reckless manner on our precious time off!”

He bristled at her criticism of him. “So you’d prefer it if I were reckless on missions?”

“That’s not what I said!” Her voice was very shrill again, and he shut his eyes, as if that could block out the pain it was causing in his ears. It occurred to him belatedly that maybe she was upset about missing a long-awaited chance to have sex, too. Outwardly, she was all polished charm and smooth politeness, icy intelligence mixed with warmth for the few and chosen, but he also knew how insatiable she could be, practically tearing off his clothing as soon as the door slid shut behind them, reduced to pants and moans and whimpers of pleasure at the touch of his fingertips and lips, riding out the waves of ecstasy to the last… “SEIFER! You HAVE to STAY AWAKE!”

Right now, annoying was what she was. He’d give anything to be allowed to make that bossy voice break into gasps and murmured pleas. “Tell me something I don’t already know”, he growled, keeping his eyes shut just for the hell of it.

Either Quistis took that literally, or she vented out her own frustration in an unusually thoughtless way. “Hmm… Well. I took a pregnancy test the other day, and then--”

Seifer jolted up so quickly he almost threw up again – or was it because of her words? “WHAT?” he yowled. He felt like his head was going to explode and his heart was clawing its way up his throat alongside the vomit. His eyes couldn’t be any more open than they were as he stared at her.

She seemed just as startled as he was. “Oh, no! No! No, it was negative. Like I knew it would be. It was just a routine check-up. I’m so sorry, I didn’t think this through… I wouldn’t spring it on you like that.” She got up and moved to sit by him on the bed, but he turned away from her with an angry twist of his shoulders.

“Fuck…! Just give me some room to breathe.”

It took him a long time to get his breathing even, for his heart to slow into its steady beat. His head would stop pounding eventually, he hoped. When he finally looked up at her, she was still standing in front of him where he’d stopped her from approaching him, and she was wringing her hands, looking sorry. He hated how sad her sapphire eyes could be; it took all the anger out of him in a heartbeat because he couldn’t stand the thought of her being down.

“I’m sorry”, she said again. “I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking.”

“Obviously.” There was a bite to his voice that he couldn’t keep down, no matter how contrite she was.

“I wouldn’t just throw it at you out of the blue like that. I wouldn’t.” Quistis sighed. “We’ve been very careful with protection.”

For some reason – nothing about this day was making any damn sense to him anymore – her remark just fuelled his aggravation. She always insisted on condoms and kept her own birth control shots meticulously up-to-date, which was fine in a way, it wasn’t like Seifer wanted to become a father right this instant, but the way she sometimes made it feel like it would be the worst thing in the world to have his child, a disaster they would have to prevent by any means necessary…

It ate at him more than he’d let himself acknowledge, like their entire ‘relationship’ status, or the lack of it, did. Was she… ashamed of him? Ashamed to be publicly involved with him? Afraid her friends would look down on her for going out with a disgraced loser like Seifer Almasy? Fuck that fucking shit. His nostrils flared as he inhaled. “Because Hyne forbid you’d actually get pregnant – then you’d have to explain to people where the baby came from!” he spat.

This time Quistis flinched and took a step backwards. He could see a defensive fire light up in her at the same time as she tried to fully process his words and why they hurt her. “We’ve only been dating for a few months now, Seifer!”

He threw his head back and barked a completely joyless laughter. “This isn’t dating, Quistis! This is FUCKING. We fuck, and it’s great, but we never do anything else together – training and fucking, is that all we’re good for? I would love to take you out on real dates: to dinner, movie, theatre, opera, cabaret, whatever the fuck you’d like – an autumn carnival or a late-night walk on the beach... hell, even just go get coffee and sit and TALK about anything and everything with you! I only hear your thoughts and opinions on things when we meet as a group, and it’s okay but it’s not enough, I want to really talk with you, have real conversations where we don’t have to watch what we say in case other people might hear...! The undercover banter is fun, don’t get me wrong, but we could do that even if people knew about us. But to you it’s all about what other people might think when they see us! You think about them before you think about US!”

Whoa. Where had all that come from? He took a deep breath, and another one, and tried to do to his maelstrom of thoughts what Quistis had done to his desktop, but it was difficult, especially when she looked like he’d slapped her. She was pale and starting to tremble and her eyes were wide like saucers, but what undid him was the incredulous frown of her brows. Like she couldn’t believe he’d done this to her, never in a million years, not even after everything they’d been through.

And then she opened her mouth and it became even worse. “Then why are you bothering with me?!” she asked in a voice that verged on breaking into tears. It tore at his heart just as much as the look on her face and the bottomless blueness in her eyes did. “I-I’m sure there are plenty of girls who wouldn’t have to give a thought to being seen with you! You could k-kiss them whenever you wanted to! W-why--”

“BECAUSE I WANT YOU!” he bellowed. “Fuck damnit, Trepe! I want YOU! I want to go on fucking dates with you, I want to hold your fucking hand, I think I want to live my life with you, for fuck’s sake, get married and be disgustingly happy and have a whole team of blond little kids. With you, of all the fucking people in the world.” He caught the intensifying look on her face, like a panicked animal’s, chased into a corner; it might run, it might fight, it might calm down and realise everything was going to be okay, or it might self-destruct just to get away from the threatening scene. Hyne, he hated himself right now. He swung a hand into his pillow, hard. “Not right now! I’d settle for holding your hand, fuck.”

She’d fucking looked right at him and smiled at him when they’d all met to look at their new photographs and Selphie had been gushing about wedding photography! But that had been a couple of months ago already. Was it okay to dream about all things nice and sweet, as long as it’d never come true or have a chance in hell of happening? Was that what Quistis thought about them? What WAS he to her?

“You mark me with hickeys, like to let everyone know ‘this guy is mine’”, he continued, aware of the wheedling tone in his voice. She cringed at it. “But you won’t let me be yours nor will you be mine. What the fuck is up with that? I wanna be yours. Don’t you wanna be mine?”

Quistis was stunned speechless and still looking like she might bolt at any second. It chafed at him so much; he couldn’t believe the heaviness in his chest and the raw pringling all over his skin. Now that he’d opened this Pandora’s box from hell, not unlike the fuckery he’d got up to with the Lunatic Pandora, he chose to see it through to the end. Giving up halfway wasn’t his style, no matter if it killed him to follow through. He went on, despite the pounding in his head and the vague nausea, which he couldn’t distinguish between being caused by his concussion or the emotional suicide he was currently committing. He kept his eyes on her feet, alert for the slightest twitch in them to signal she was leaving.

“If this is just fucking, if that’s all you want from me, then let me know! I think that’d be fair! I’ve had my only dream trampled to death, my soul is just on this side of broken... I don’t want to have my heart broken as well.” After a silent pause Seifer looked up at Quistis and took in her very shaken face. It caused him pain that she was so silent and visibly distraught. He continued, softer but suddenly very tired. “I don’t want you to feel pressured. Fuck, I never want to do that to you. But I want you to be honest with me so I can be sure we’re on the same page. Right now I think we’re not. I think I... mistook us for something more. My mistake.” He lay back down on the bed with his back to her, as if he could smother the cracks in his chest by holding himself physically together and hiding them from the world. And her.

She still didn’t speak, and it took more than a minute before he heard her stutter a deep exhale and sit back down. The room was very quiet for a long time. All he could hear was his own heart beating an unnecessarily loud tattoo in his body, so strong he could feel it in his head, and his own breathing, which he was labouring to keep regular and like he didn’t want to cry. Crying would only lead to more headache, not to mention heartache. He wouldn’t. Not as long as Quistis sat in his room, very still and inaudible. He couldn’t even hear the rustle of magazine pages being turned. He wondered if she was staring at him, trying to understand why the hell she was wasting her time with a lout like him. Hot tears burned behind his closed eyelids.

When his phone rang unexpectedly some time later, the sound cut through the air like a panic alarm and Seifer jolted again, but a scrape of chair wheels on the tile floor followed by a dull twin thud of boots hitting the floor was quicker and Quistis picked up the phone before he could even turn over to reach for it. “Hello?”

He didn’t turn over and just listened to her soft, stuffy voice, all too conscious of her closeness and his overwhelming desire to pull her to him and tell her to forget everything, that he was a thoughtless jerk… and also knowing in every cell of his body that she would squirm out of his embrace and give him a disgruntled look and ask how dare he push and pull her around like a puppet with no feelings. How dare he, indeed.

“No, we haven’t done any tests yet. … Alright, we will. … I should expect so too, but we’ll come back there if he’s not. Okay. Bye now.” She hung up and didn’t flinch when she turned to him and he was standing up right next to her, having correctly surmised it was time for some cognitivity. She looked much calmer than he felt, so sombre as she tilted her head up a bit to look into his eyes, but her nose was pink and there were copious amounts of tear tracks fresh on her cheeks. He wanted to touch them, to wipe them away with caressing fingertips, but he wasn’t sure how badly he’d fucked her and himself up, so he clenched his hands into loose fists instead and kept them down.

Quistis first asked him to solve a series of basic mathematical problems and to answer some base-level scientific questions. The sky was fucking blue. She maintained eye contact with him, but apart from her subdued voice, he couldn’t read her at all. It was like she’d withdrawn away from him. Fuck.

When she was giving him instructions to move his body according to direction, her face started crumbling a little and for a flash he worried he wasn’t performing as well as he thought… but then she moved closer to take his pulse and check his pupils under strong lighting, and after asking about his head and vision and sense of motion, she spoke at last.

“I don’t want people to know about us because I’m scared that we’re not going to make it and then something will be irreparably different. You’ll think you can’t hang out with us anymore or people make it weird or...” She paused, an annoyed and confused frown on her face again, but it wasn’t aimed at him, for once in Seifer’s lifetime. Well, technically she was frowning at his chest, but he was fairly sure she was frowning at herself. “I keep making this about other people.”

There were tears in her eyes as she looked up at his face again, this time with an imploring, searching expression on her own. He nodded tiredly, trying to smile but not mustering enough energy or joy to do so, and he made an ‘mmhm’ noise, but at the same time he felt cautiously encouraged enough to place a hand lightly on her waist. She drew in a breath at his touch, but he couldn’t decipher what it meant.

“I would...” Quistis swallowed the tremor in her voice and tried again. “I would love to go out with you, Seifer. I have... feelings. For you. I have feelings for you. I like you very, very much. I want us to make it, I really, really do. And I know I’m not treating you fairly right now and I’m very sorry.” She was starting to well up properly, her blue eyes turning into depthless pools of saltwater.

Seifer pulled her to his chest to stop it. He’d made her cry more than enough for this lifetime. “That’ll do for now, Quis. Thank you.”

He had to hold her for a while, even resort to gently swaying from side to side when she started sniffling against his shoulder, but eventually she wrapped her arms around him too and he felt like a lead weight fell off his heart. He inhaled her lightly perfumed shampoo scent and drank it in, glad that for once, just once, he’d fucked everything down into some sort of right place instead of up and over.

When he sat back down on the bed, still feeling queasy for several reasons, he tried to pull her down with him but she smiled and remained upright. “Rest”, she said and pecked a lingering kiss on his forehead. “But stay awake.”

He smirked at her when she sat down on the chair, scooting it closer to the bed.

In ten minutes they’d returned right to where they started. Seifer was lying down with his eyes closed when Quistis kicked his hipbone none too gently. “SEIFER!”

“’M alive”, he muttered. Alive and in a relationship with a sadistic woman. What more could he ask for?

“Seifer!”

“What. Just lying. Awake.”

“I’m naked”, came a teasing response.

“Liar”, he murmured, cracking one eye open anyway. When he saw that she was just as dressed as before, he poked his tongue out at her. “Your panties are on fire.”

Quistis made a coy face and shrugged. “I’m not wearing any.”

Seifer managed to hold back the vicious words he wanted to hurl at her for being so cruel as to tease him so, and instead just made a point of looking her up and down very carefully, taking his time trailing a heated gaze up from her boot-clad feet to the delicious stretch of creamy skin that ended in the hem of her uniform skirt. And then he pouted at her, but it was hard with the intense blush that he relished spreading on her face. He retaliated by telling her in excruciating detail what he would do to her if she stopped harping about his injury, and ooh, how she squirmed in her seat and flushed as red as her tie…! He breathed in her heavy, panting breaths like he could smell her arousal and grinned.

And then, taking advantage of the unfortunate no-sex rule and being alone with her, he engaged her in a long discussion about the merits of Esthar’s most recent trading decisions and how the Garden could benefit from them. Watching Quistis talk politics with a carefully assessing, mostly neutral stance on the topics while looking like he’d just ghost-fucked her tickled his fancy.

In the next cognitive test she gave him a while later, she ran him through all the previous parts and then wrote some lines on a loose piece of paper and handed it to him. “All clear so far. You seem to have got off without a scratch, you lucky little punk. I guess you were right about not needing good luck wishes. Please read these out loud for me.”

Seifer obliged, admiring the long loops and slanted letters of her penmanship as he did. They were all simple sentences, like ‘Is the dog’s toy ball red or blue?’ and ‘Fastitocalon-Fs can bite fingers off humans in a snap’. He gave her an amused look as he read that one. You could take her out of instructorship, but you couldn’t take the instructor out of her. Hell, he wouldn’t even be a SeeD now if you could. It was all thanks to her intense crash course private tutoring that he’d finally passed, and so was their relationship. She’d bickered and shouted and literally banged books on various parts of his body and slapped him upside the head until some sense had seeped in. And then he’d kissed her quiet… until he’d made her moan against his shoulder on her old desk.

The last line on the page made him pause, and he sensed her take a quiet breath in anticipation. “’Quistis would very much like to be my girlfriend officially.’ … See, why you gotta write it down but you can’t say it to me? Or others?” He handed the paper back to her and kept his eyes on her face, a neutral expression on his own.

Quistis shrugged again, this time awkward, and frowned at him briefly, uncertainly. “It’s… It’s difficult for me to face rejection. I think on some level I’m avoiding it completely. I won’t have to withstand it if I don’t give it a chance to get at me. That way it can’t hurt me.”

“I’m not rejecting you, Quis. Pretty much the opposite.” He offered her a small smile and then his hand, palm upwards, outstretched between them like he wanted the paper back again. She looked like she might give it to him, and then she understood and placed her own hand into his and he gave it a tight squeeze. “And I’m going to hurt everything that hurts you.”

She smiled, awkward and intense in her affection for him. “You can’t cut rejection with your gunblade.”

“No, but I can kick the ass of anyone asinine enough to reject you. … ‘Xcept for Squally boy, because you’d be his right now and not almost-mine. I’m sorry he was an ass, but then again I’m not, because he makes me look good in comparison and you know I love that. I’ll never tell you to go talk to a wall. I’m gonna grab your hand and tell you to show me who hurt you.”

Quistis shone brightly with happiness, like a sun in his quiet little dorm room, orbiting him and giving him life and light. It occurred to him that maybe no one had ever offered to take care of her; everyone around her knew her to be a capable, strong, lethal young woman who could take care of herself and of everyone gathered around her – but that didn’t mean she had to do it all the time. He wanted to take care of her, he wanted to let her be soft and vulnerable and trust in the fact that he was looking after her. If she wanted it. Seifer wanted her to be what she wanted to be, not what she had to be. If she wanted to be the sun every day of her life, he’d do his damnedest to let that happen.

 

\ / I I I

 

The phone rang again, shrill and sudden in the dimness of Seifer’s room. He snapped out of his idle thoughts and rolled out of the bed with a burst of energy that gave him slight motion sickness. Stupid concussion, stupid Chocobos… As he picked up the phone, he glanced at Quistis, who had fallen asleep on the chair. It was a hard, wooden, ridiculously unergonomic piece of shit uncomfortable chair, but she looked so tired; she hadn’t even woken up to the phone ringing. A trained SeeD could nap anywhere, but the way Quistis had curled up into a tiny ball of long limbs and hair tumbling on her face still made Seifer’s heart squeeze tighter. He resolved to move her to his bed as soon as he’d finish the call.

“Yeello?”

There was a confused pause and then Dr Kadowaki’s voice came down the line, sounding as tired as Quistis looked. “Seifer? Good, you’re still up. I know it’s very late. How are you feeling?” After hearing an almost fully truthful review of his current health, the doctor hummed in a pleased tone. “That sounds good. We really were a little worried for you there when they first brought you in, but it sounds like you got off easy. That’s good. Why don’t you come down here for one more official check-up, and I can then sign you off officially and let you go to bed.”

Seifer grinned to himself. Bed sounded goooood. Especially if his honey-haired companion had rested enough to be up to some making-up-for-lost-time. “Sure thing, doc, be there as soon as possible.”

He hung up and looked at the clock. Two a.m. No wonder everyone was nodding off. It had been a long day, especially for Quistis, coming straight off a mission. He roused her by shaking her shoulder until she swatted his hand away with a grumpy mutter and sat up, and he explained to her that he was one trip to the Infirmary away from being a free man again. The more he waggled his eyebrows up and down, the more hers lowered in annoyance, but he put it up to being awakened out of a back-killing nap. He’d help her loosen up soon enough.

Quistis accompanied him to the Infirmary, where she relayed her reports of Seifer’s cognitive test results succinctly and almost managing not to yawn repeatedly. Dr Kadowaki seemed pleased with her performance and even more delighted with his as she tested him once more, and not a small part of him doubted that that was mostly because once she’d officially sign him off as recovered, she could go to sleep as well.

Then he made the mistake of asking for a painkiller for his head, and both women frowned at him in unison. “I’ve been awake for...” Seifer started hotly, then trailed off as he realised both ladies had probably been awake for longer than he had and weren’t complaining about headaches of their own. Quistis certainly had reason enough to have a headache, and she did rub her temples as she turned to Dr Kadowaki.

“He’s been completely fine apart from the headache... and his usual charming personality shining through. He performs superbly on the tests. Isn’t it possible his head just… simply hurts? The Chocobo did pounce on him with quite the aggression.”

Seifer scowled at no one in the room. The only person he wanted pouncing on him with passion of any kind was hugging her elbows and nodding in furious agreement at the doctor’s musings of his situation. At last they agreed to give him his painkiller, with a stern warning not to fall asleep before dawn, when he would once more have to trudge to the Infirmary for a reassessment. Seifer sighed, more to be dramatic than out of real pique, although he was pretty sure he’d have a few more bruises from Quistis – and not the kind from any fun activity with her – by the time he finally got to sleep.

Strolling back out of the Infirmary, Seifer had a wild thought about the opportunities the quiet night provided for him, especially if he had to make it to dawn without falling asleep. “I’ll reverse race ya back to the dorms”, he said to Quistis. She was stumbling slightly ahead of him, her boots hitting and shuffling on the floor in an unsteady rhythm, but she stopped and turned to look at him at this, just in time to see him slow down his walk. He envisioned first a snail stuck on superglue, then a drunken sloth, and tried to emulate their speed.

She didn’t look incredulous or surprised, she didn’t give him an “are you SERIOUS?” look, she didn’t even roll her eyes or arch a questioning eyebrow at him – she simply looked at him. Seifer took it as a sign of her really knowing and understanding him. “What”, she said after a pause. It wasn’t even a question.

“Let’s take a walk”, he suggested, holding out his hand towards her. “Together. We never do anything nice together.”

At that, she did frown and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “We do! We just went Chocobo racing this afternoon!”

“I meant alone, together. Since we can’t sleep, and you won’t let us do anything FUN… Let’s do something nice then. Take a stroll together, once around the lobby?”

Quistis made an apologetic face and shifted her arms into hugging her elbows again, a painfully obvious crack in her emotional armour. “Someone might see us”, she protested feebly.

“It’s past two in the morning. Anyone who sees us has explaining of their own to do.” He’d stopped as well and crossed his own arms, angry at himself for putting them into this same argument once again despite his best intentions. “Quistis, I just want to take a walk with you, is that too much to ask? You promised me a special treat. I was gonna ask you to go public and official with me as my prize when I’d win. Now I’m just asking for one walk and your hand for fifteen minutes.”

“You didn’t exactly win.”

Seifer huffed at her avoidance and started stalking away at a normal pace, suddenly just wanting to get back to his room and sulk for a moment until sense returned to him again, but Quistis stopped him by grabbing his hand as he swept past her.

“Okay”, she said very formally. “One stroll. We’ll see how it goes.”

“You mean see how it feels.” But he smiled, happiness blooming in his chest, and he felt even better when she smiled back and squeezed his hand.

Like most things in his life, this happiness was intense but short-lived, because they’d barely made it to the lobby when Quistis’s knees buckled up, her eyes rolled into fluttering eyelids, and she’d have collapsed on the floor in a heap, had Seifer not scooped her into his embrace just in time. Instant worry made the warmth inside him turn to ice in a flash. “Quis? Quistis!”

She came to as he gently slapped her cheeks with his fingers, and she seemed more embarrassed than anything. “I’m… I’m okay. Really. Just very… light-headed. We didn’t have time to have any food or barely any sleep during the mission, and then today… yesterday happened and-- !!!”

She squeaked in surprise as he swept her off her unsteady feet into his arms for real and started carrying her towards the cafeteria. She protested a little for show, and he ignored it. 

In the deserted cafeteria, he plopped her down into a chair. “Sit”, he said gruffly.

To her credit, she did remain seated while he went about the closed line, collecting whatever left-overs, fruit, snack bars and various other items had been left out for midnight snacks while the kitchen staff slept until the morning shift. He brought back a tray laden with just about everything he’d found that still looked edible, and Quistis eyed it with doubt as he set it down in front of her. “Eat.”

“I’m going to get stomach ache if I eat all of this.”

Sitting down across the table from her, Seifer sighed in exasperation and leaned down on the table top, propping his head into both hands. “Just fucking eat something. And then sleep.”

Quistis gave him a look as she picked up a sandwich and tore it in half, handing the other part over to him. He hadn’t eaten in several hours, either. But she hadn’t had food in DAYS.

“I swear on my life I’ll stay awake since you want me to. Let me look after you for a change, okay.”

She stared at him for a while, sandwich half forgotten in her hand, and then to his surprise tears welled up in her eyes again. When he lifted his head off his hands in concern, she gestured that everything was alright. “I’m sorry. It’s just… very hard for me to… be cared about. Even after all that’s happened in the recent months, after I lost my instructorship, with you all… with you especially. Sex is easier, it’s very carnal… Caring is more difficult to handle, lovely as it is. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it. I do. Very much. And that’s what scares me: the enormity of this and what this could be...come.” She waved the sandwich-wielding hand between them to define ‘this’. “I’m just… I’m just a little bit scared and quite overwhelmed. But not unwilling.”

Seifer nodded. He understood very well, and he was glad she was talking about her feelings and being open with him. “Just eat”, he smiled. “And then sleep. One thing at a time. I’ll never force you to hold my hand, we’ll do it when you’re ready.”

“You’ll just emotional-blackmail me into it”, she snorted and tucked into her sandwich, making sure to smile at him with glee in her wet eyes to assure him she didn’t resent him for it.

“I’ll tone it down, promise. I just wanna be yours.”

 

\ / I I I

 

True to his promise to himself, and the other one to her, Quistis was asleep in his bed and he was whiling the time away, flipping through the same pile of magazines she’d rustled earlier. His gaze kept sneaking off the pages and towards the bed, at the soft golden hair spread on his pillow and the way she hugged a corner of the blanket to her chest, both fists holding onto it like someone was going to rip it off of her at any given moment. Seifer felt affection so strongly it almost hurt, but in the best kind of way. She was so adorable, and real, and vulnerable, and trusted him enough to sleep… Well, almost.

Like clockwork, she sprang awake with a jolt at least every twenty minutes, usually more like every ten minutes, and found him immediately with her wide eyes to see if he was okay. Every time he stared back sardonically and loudly turned the page of whatever magazine he happened to be holding. She would fall back asleep, sighing and content, until the next little bout of feeling like she was slacking off her supervisory duties woke her up again.

The longest stretch he timed was a whopping 31 minutes, and just as he was starting to think she’d finally relaxed enough to hit the deep sleep, she gasped awake and almost rolled off the bed in her misguided panic, tangling herself into the sheets like a DIY mummy as she did.

He closed the magazine he was reading – he’d been in the middle of hating a boring and totally lame review of recent gunblade upgrade models that completely missed all the points of why people chose gunblades as their weapons – and levelled a disappointed look at her as she blew hair off her face and studied how well he appeared to be this time.

“You know, I’m really startin’ to get pissed off at your blatant mistrust in my promise to you AND in my ability to keep myself alive, not to mention the incongruence between your behaviour and your lovely words. Yeah, see, I said a big word! My brain still works. But I guess that’s not what you’re interested in when you’re with me… Don’t worry, your little…” He scoffed. “Your not-so-little sex toy still works.”

Quistis kept looking at him with wide open eyes and a shameful blush on her face. She opened her mouth but didn’t speak, and then looked down at the sheet with a frown as she tried to come up with the proper way to respond to his flared-up temper.

Seifer sighed. Why did his caring about people always come out so hostile and masked in meanness? “Ah, fuck. Forget everything I said. I didn’t mean half of that. Sorry. I’m tired and my headache is comin’ back and makin’ me grouchy. I’m just being a dick for no reason. Just ignore that and go back to sleep. I’m fine. And I’m sorry.”

She pressed her head back down on the pillow, but she kept looking at him, just looking, with no discernible expression on her face, and after a few minutes it was really starting to unnerve Seifer. He shifted uncomfortably.

“I said--”

“Let’s go public.”

“… I think I’m having a stroke or something now because I thought I just heard you say--”

“Let’s do it. … Unless… Unless you don’t want me anymore...”

Seifer lunged at Quistis and shut her up with a kiss.

 

\ / I I I

 

As soon as Seifer was cleared for missions again the following day (and Xu had stopped laughing her head off after hearing what had happened to him - “Oh, Quistis, why didn’t you get it on film! Okay, okay, just describe it to me again, every single detail so I can commit it to my mind’s home movies.”), he was given a long heavy-duty mission, due to start the very next day at fuck o’clock in the morning. There was a very real and bitter likelihood that not everyone would return home from this particular mission. Because fuck his happiness, apparently.

So that night after curfew, he snuck into Quistis’s room, using the spare key she’d given him many weeks ago and making sure that no one was around to see him do so. For all his pestering, he wanted Quistis to be the one to decide when they’d make their relationship public and official, not some damn creeping Trepie announcing it on the Garden network – or worse still, calling for help and attacking him because he was ‘breaking and entering Quistis Trepe’s room without permission’.

She was in the shower when he entered, so he sat down on her bed and waited. There was a moment of quietness when she turned the shower off, and then she poked her head out of the bathroom. “I thought I sensed you… You’re supposed to be resting for your mission.”

“How can I leave without saying goodbye to you? Properly?” He made a suggestive face, letting out a playful growling noise and winking at her. To his intense delight, she stepped out into the room wearing just a tiny towel, which she unwrapped from her water-beaded body as she came to him, climbing into his lap. He welcomed her with open arms. “I want you to forget all the stupid shit I whined about going public. I don’t...” He licked his way from her shoulder to her neck, where he placed a sucking kiss that made her moan and grind ever so slightly against him. “I don’t want that to be what you remember of me.”

“Shut up”, Quistis said.

“This has been fun, hasn’t it?” As usual, he ignored her bossiness. That had, after all, been a staple feature of their evolving relationship for years. “I’m sorry I pressured you, I really shouldn’t have... I want you to forget what a fucking jerk I was about it. If I don’t come back--”

She leaned away from nibbling on his earlobe and gave him a stern instructor look, all the more impressive because she was naked and wet in more than one way. “Seifer, shut UP. Don’t say things like that, don’t even think about them. You’ll come back and we’ll see what’s happening. If a bunch of wacky sorceresses didn’t kill you, nor my year as your instructor, then nothing will. Don’t let it. Come back.”

He obeyed her for a while, shutting up and coming up with more pleasing uses for his mouth, and they made out, his clothing mysteriously coming off of him as minutes stretched on and things got hot and heavy – he did have a willing, naked woman in his arms after all… But his mind couldn’t let go of the previous topic completely, and so he reluctantly pulled away from a breathtaking kiss to smirk at her.

“Ha, imagine if--” Quistis immediately pinched him hard and glared at him, her cheeks rosy from arousal and her eyes as cold and hard as glaciers. “Ow! Okay, WHEN I come back and we wouldn’t tell anyone. We could carry it on for ever. Just picture it: we’ll be pushing seventy and sneaking off to see our secret grandkids!”

His eagerness and easy smile made her laugh, but then she went quiet and gazed softly at him with more fondness than he thought he’d ever deserve. “Just come back”, she murmured at last. “Don’t worry about anything else. Just come back to me.”

Late at night, long after they were done with their ‘proper’ non-verbal goodbyes, she was asleep in the tussled sheets that stuck to her skin from the sweat they’d worked up and Seifer was pulling the last of his clothes back on to sneak back to his own room. He stopped and looked at her for a moment, his chest uncomfortably heavy with the knowledge he might never see her again, and then he bent to brush some hair off her face and kissed her once more on the lips for not-good-luck. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Quis.”

He was turning away to leave when her hand touched his arm, trailed down its length to his hand and squeezed his fingers. Without making any other movement or indication of being awake, she spoke in a hushed tone: “Then come back so I can tell you how I love you.”

He didn’t say goodbye because he didn’t mean it to be one.

 

\ / I I I

 

Over two weeks later, freshly back at Garden straight from the parking lot at yet another cursedly early hour of the day, Seifer wanted to go to sleep, but it was breakfast time and there were other, more important things to do before rest. He ventured into the cafeteria, eyes skimming over the crowded place for the one face he wanted to see… and there was everyone, at their table, the only one large enough to accommodate all seven of them, Seifer included. And there was Quistis, making an amused scrunched-up face at something Irvine was saying, his fork jabbing the air for emphasis, and then she glanced around and Seifer saw from all the way across the room, past all the faceless unimportant people, how her breath caught when she noticed him. Somehow she both got emotional and lit up, which made love swell in his chest.

She knew, of course, that he was alive and in one piece, having kept a constant eye on the casualty reports, and because as soon as they were heading back home, Seifer had sent a hurried message to her in the middle of the night: “Alive, okay, coming home, can’t wait to see you. Love, S”. She had replied in less than a minute: “I know. Happy! Waiting here for you.” and signed it off with a heart emoticon that had made him chuckle happily. His comm device had bleeped again in seconds, abruptly turning his soft laugh into a sigh of pent-up desire: “Rest now! Want to ride my boyfriend later. See you in the morning. Yours, Instructor”. He’d never typed a reply faster in his life: “Giddyup tonight then! Sweet dreams, I wanna star in them. S”.

She knew he was okay – but seeing him in person made it hit home and made it even better.

The gang greeted him with typical sluggishness of the morning as he made his way to the table, and he reciprocated the lack of enthusiasm. Conveniently, his usual seat perpendicularly next to Quistis was unoccupied, so he slumped down into it and made a tired face for the rest of them while Quistis squeezed his hand under the table and he returned it.

Xu made a whole show of rolling her eyes and sighing and slamming a fist softly into the tabletop. “Damn, he made it back alive!” she muttered jokingly. Zell smirked at that before glancing at Seifer to make sure he understood they weren’t REALLY serious.

He did, and he grinned back at them wickedly. “If that bitch with acid tattoos didn’t kill me, a simple mission can’t. I’m just too well trained.” He let go of Quistis’s hand to put both of his hands behind his head as he leaned back and propped one foot up on the other knee. He’d have a bit of breakfast and friendly banter with the gang and some undercover innuendo with Quistis, then fuck off to sleep for a while, then he’d type up a report and deliver it to that Nida guy, because he’d have had enough of both Squall and Xu by the time breakfast was over, and then he’d seek out Quistis and make up for all the missed orgasms of the last three weeks with interest. Life was good, for now.

“Now that we’re all here for once...” Quistis piped up, loud and formal enough to make everyone at the table shut up and turn to look at her. She seemed flustered, not having realised she’d have this many pairs of eyes so intently on her. “I… I, um… I’d like you all to officially meet my boyfriend.”

Selphie made a mewl of dismay and appeared distraught over this piece of news. “We haven’t even found out Seifer’s secret love, STILL…! And now you tell us you’ve had one AS WELL?! Boooooooo!”

Rinoa let out a squeaky peep and looked over at Seifer suddenly, and then back at Quistis, and Seifer bit back a smile – Rinoa had always been intuitive… which helped immensely when one was in a relationship with someone as taciturn as Squall.

Selphie, meanwhile, brightened up again. “But yay for love! Soooo where is he! And then maybe Seifie will tell us too!”

Everyone else remained stunned silent and waited for Quistis to reply, but Seifer looked around and snatched Selphie’s event planner notebook from Zell, who had been doodling into it. He plucked the pen right out of the fighter’s frozen hand and hastily scribbled ‘it’s OK – don’t have to do it right now’. He turned the notebook just enough for Quistis to read it.

She smiled at it and said quietly, looking straight into his eyes with a fierce, unwavering love, “I know. But he would like me to, no matter how he protests, and it’s time for me to stop being scared of good things.”

He looked back, searching for any doubt or second thoughts in her eyes, and when he found none, he smiled and put his hand on the table, palm up, and he almost choked with happiness when she put hers into it.

“Selphie”, Quistis said with a smile. “You get two mystery lovers solved with one hit. Seifer and I are seeing each other.”

An ominous silence followed her announcement. Xu looked like she was fighting back the disgusted cringe of her life for Quistis’s sake. Then Selphie let out a whoop of delight and yelled “Everything suddenly makes so much sense!” Rinoa joined in the joy with a softer croon of happiness as well, and Irvine nodded to the blonde couple and winked, muttering about teacher’s pets in a tone heavily laced with innuendo. Zell groaned, which Seifer had half expected, but so did Squall, and then Seifer was even more puzzled as everyone started digging out their wallets while Rinoa beamed with smug joy. Ohh. The bet…!

Quistis looked completely baffled, so he explained: “They made bets on if and when we’d ever end up together. Rinoa was the only one who thought we would.”

“Ha! A blind person would have seen the chemistry between you two!” the young sorceress exclaimed. She poked out her tongue at everyone in a childish ‘oh ye of little faith’ gesture and started picking the proffered money off people’s hands. Squall seemed amused when she took his. She only paused when it was Seifer’s turn, and flicked her brown eyes from the 100 gil note to Quistis’s and his faces.

“What.” Quistis pointed at the bill and squinted at him.

Seifer grinned. “I overheard Selphie and Rin arguing about our chances and put down a hundred on NEVER as a cover, since you wanted to keep us a secret.”

“Oh… I’ll pay you back.”

“Nah. ‘S a small price to have someone like you all to myself.”

Rinoa had finally made up her mind and gently pushed Seifer’s hand back, the bill still between his fingers. “Keep it. It was a sweet gesture. You’re a real romantic.” She turned to Zell and yanked his 170 gil to herself with a giddy grin. “And you’re a disbeliever! Everyone, let’s celebrate this on Saturday! I’ll treat everyone to a meal and drinks in Balamb! We can tell the restaurant staff it’s someone’s birthday so we’ll get special treatment.” She hid her innocent, toothy grin behind the relatively thick stack of money and glanced at Quistis and Seifer. “I just can’t decide who’s the lucky one, Quisty or Seifer.”

“I am”, Seifer declared instantly. He put his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders and pulled her close for a kiss on the temple, in public, even though she giggled shyly and blushed, just because he could. He considered whispering his feelings to her but decided against making her feel even more awkward right now. He’d do it tonight, in private, just the two of them. He wanted the first official time to be special. “How about a real date tonight? Finally. Just you and me and the stars in our eyes, and that ride you mentioned earlier.”

Quistis blushed some more – Seifer wondered idly just how red he could make her, if he really tried; oh, they might be public now but he wasn’t about to stop with the covert innuendo... – and when she nodded happily, he kissed her on the lips. Because he finally could.

Zell and Xu both made gagging sounds at having to witness this display of affection, but then their quiet ‘yuck’s and ‘wait, QUISTY’s the one who’s been giving him hickeys?!’ were followed by sputters of feeble outrage as Irvine and Selphie respectively slapped their heads like a synchronised team and Rinoa tittered. Even Squall produced a sound that might be understood as amused. Seifer smirked against Quistis’s mouth, feeling her smile back.

Somewhere behind him, two probably-Trepies dropped their trays with noises of shock and distress.

Ha.

**Author's Note:**

> So obviously Selphie found the scribble in her notebook later and kept it and flaunted it at their wedding, saying, “Aren’t we all glad that she did it!” and gave it to them as a present, framed with lots and lots of photos of them being obnoxiously in love in public.
> 
> I know ‘cognitivity’ isn’t a real word, and so does Seifer – and also that the sun doesn’t orbit the earth. The laws of attraction make even heliocentric universal laws bend! Please don’t come at me for taking some artistic licenses with how the world and words work :D
> 
> If I could, I would have named this with the gif of Chandler Bing going “You and I have always been like *gestures wildly between himself and the other person*”  
> But instead, the name is from a line, “she feels her skin touch the floor”, from Niall Horan’s song Mirrors, which I listened to repeatedly as this was shaping up – the chorus is like straight from Seifer’s heart. I’ve always found the floor a comforting, stabilising non-personified omnipresence in times of great emotional turmoil. Lying on the floor has some secret magic in it. So does putting your feet down on it steadily and with determination. I want Q and S to be each other’s emotional floor. The floor is always there to support you! :D


End file.
